Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, November 26 (Xinhua)-- NASA's Smart Mars helicopter is exploring the Jazelo crater on Mars, while NASA engineers are testing carbon fiber blades on Earth for the next generation of Mars helicopters that will surpass Smart's performance in future Mars missions, especially the Mars sample return mission planned for the 2030s.

The atmospheric pressure and surface gravity on Mars are less than 1 and 1/3 of those on Earth, respectively. It is because of this extremely low surface pressure that Smart can fly on Mars at between 2400 and 2900 rpm per minute. This is much higher than on Earth, because helicopters usually only need 500 to 600 rpm to fly.

The Smart Mars helicopter uses four carbon fiber blades to form two counter-rotating rotors, meaning they rotate in the opposite direction to each other, with a span of 1.2m and a speed of between 2400 and 2900 rpm. In addition, witty weighs about 1.8kg on Earth, but since the gravity of Mars is only 1/3 of that of Earth, it weighs only 0.68kg on the surface of Mars.

For the next generation of Martian helicopters, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena are building blades 10 centimeters longer than Smart's blades, with different designs and higher strength.

"We increased our blade speed to 3500 rpm, which is 750 rpm faster than the Smart blade," Tyler Del Sesto, JPL's deputy test director of the sample recovery helicopter, said in the NASA's official statement. "these more efficient blades are now more than just a hypothesis, they are ready to fly."

According to CTOnews.com, one of the goals of the next generation of Mars helicopters may be the NASA-ESA joint Mars sample return mission in the 1930s. This task will consist of three parts: sample collection, sample collection and return task. The sample recovery mission will use the most equipment, including two "smart" helicopters, which will use robotic arms to collect samples currently being placed on the surface of Mars' Jazelo crater by NASA's perseverance rover.

The design of the sample recovery helicopter will be different from that of the Smart, which plans to have a set of four wheels to drive to the sample after landing a few meters away from the sample. After recovery, the helicopter will fly to the sample recovery lander (SRL) and then load the sample to the Mars rise spacecraft (MAV), which launches the sample into Mars' low orbit and then returns to Earth for analysis. So far, perseverance has collected 23 samples, with the goal of collecting 38 samples.

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